PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Hovhannisyan, Anahit
AU  - Jones, Eppie
AU  - Delser, Pierpaolo Maisano
AU  - Schraiber, Joshua
AU  - Hakobyan, Anna
AU  - Margaryan, Ashot
AU  - Hrechdakian, Peter
AU  - Sahakyan, Hovhannes
AU  - Saag, Lehti
AU  - Khachatryan, Zaruhi
AU  - Yepiskoposyan, Levon
AU  - Manica, Andrea
TI  - AN ADMIXTURE SIGNAL IN ARMENIANS AROUND THE END OF THE BRONZE AGE REVEALS WIDESPREAD POPULATION MOVEMENT ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST
AID  - 10.1101/2020.06.24.168781
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.06.24.168781
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/06/24/2020.06.24.168781.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/06/24/2020.06.24.168781.full
AB  - The Armenians, a population inhabiting the region in West Asia known as the Armenian Highland, has been argued to show a remarkable degree of population continuity since the Early Neolithic. Here we test the degree of continuity of this population as well as its plausible origin, by collating modern and ancient genomic data, and adding a number of novel contemporary genomes. We show that Armenians have indeed remained unadmixed through the Neolithic and at least until the first part of the Bronze Age, and fail to find any support for historical suggestions by Herodotus of an input from the Balkans. However, we do detect a genetic input of Sardinian-like ancestry during or just after the Middle-Late Bronze Age. A similar input at approximately the same time was detected in East Africa, suggesting large-scale movement both North and South of the Middle East. Whether such large-scale population movement was a result of climatic or cultural changes is unclear, as well as the true source of gene flow remains an open question that needs to be addressed in future ancient DNA studies.Competing Interest StatementWe declare that we have competing interests